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(Remember that the polls are down today. No bounce at all from the first day of the convention)

I so agree with a lot of this article, especially the parts in bold:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- The first day of the Democratic National Convention in Denver went exactly the way Barack Obama wanted it to -- and it was a catastrophe for him and his party.

The convention began with the display of unity that Sen. Obama, D-Ill., wanted -- but what he showed the American people was a Democratic Party united around the left-leaning liberal principles that have been an anchor around its neck for 40 years.

The speech of the dying Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., didn't leave a dry eye in the house. Kennedy and his family have rallied enthusiastically around Obama, who adores the senator's assassinated brothers, especially President John F. Kennedy, as his greatest political heroes.

Giving Ted Kennedy such a keynote and honored position was simultaneously a generous gesture and political payback for Obama. Even afflicted with a brain tumor, Kennedy turned out another of the crowd-pleasing "here I stand" perorations of liberal and reform principles for which he has been so famous for so long.

But the cold fact remains that outside his native Massachusetts, Kennedy has been an albatross around his party's neck for most of his adult life. Obama out in the Rocky Mountains fell into the same trap that Kennedy's fellow Massachusetts liberal Sen. John Kerry did at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston: By highlighting Kennedy, both men threw away all their claims to appeal to working-class Heartland America as moderate centrists Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- the only national winners the Democrats have produced in the past 44 years -- managed to do.

Obama's indulgence to Kennedy, coming right after his pick of three-decade liberal Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., as his running mate, sends the message unambiguously across America that Obama is not the start of something new in the Democratic Party: He is the tail end of something very unsuccessful and very old.

The speech by Obama's wife, Michelle, when judged on its own merits, was also very impressive in both her content and delivery. In addition to the warm and fuzzy family references and touching necessary bases with the reference to Sen. Hillary Clinton, D.-N.Y., Obama's defeated rival, she went after the white working-class voters for whom Obama has been a tough sell. And she dealt well with the race issue without ever mentioning it.

Michelle Obama's message was clear: She wanted to tell the American people, "Barack and I may be high-powered lawyers, but look where we came from: hard-working blue-collar families who believed in personal responsibility. In other words, we know what it is like to struggle to make ends meet but to take pride in your family and your work. We are just like you."

Unfortunately, it won't work.

For Mrs. Obama already has been vividly defined, not by the Republican Attack Machine but by her own unfortunate utterances and obvious lifestyle, as in no way "one of us" in the mainstream popular perception. Putting her center stage on the first day of the convention was a catastrophic political error: It sent the message to conservatives and centrists that Michelle Obama in the White House would be another Hillary Clinton -- a wife who either will pull her husband's strings or will be powerful and determined enough to pursue a radical and independent political agenda of her own.

(snip)

Instead, by his own actions, Obama has now painted himself into a corner as the most radically left-wing Democratic presidential nominee since the catastrophic Sen. George McGovern in 1972. And he still has to endure two nights of showcased Clintons, both of whom will overshadow him.

It should have been impossible for Obama to lose this election: He appears determined to make it inevitable.

"Barack stood up that day," talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods, "and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about “The world as it is” and “The world as it should be..."

And, "All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won’t do – that we have an obligation to fight for the world as it should be."

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals:

"The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves…The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be."

it was said that she wrote this speech herself(CBS,ABC) but on free republic yesterday there was a thread that pointed out that she had lifted parts of a speech from some scholar in New Zealand. My thought is that she lied about writing the speech herself and an aide, who actually wrote the speech lifted parts from other speeches thinking it would not connect. HAaaaaaaaa! WRONG!!

it was said that she wrote this speech herself(CBS,ABC) but on free republic yesterday there was a thread that pointed out that she had lifted parts of a speech from some scholar in New Zealand. My thought is that she lied about writing the speech herself and an aide, who actually wrote the speech lifted parts from other speeches thinking it would not connect. HAaaaaaaaa! WRONG!!

So far then, we have an Alinksy radical reference and a plagiarized quote by Sir Paul Reeves. Maybe we should take the entire thing apart. She is a terrible writer, so I do not believe that she wrote it herself. (I read her entire Senior thesis on line--yes I did, what a fucking waste of time--but her writing sucks.)